Newsletter

Windsor Spring Road design concerns mobile home park owners

Owner Carol Marsh, of the Cedar Village Mobile Home park, points to where a proposed construction project will affect the park.

Cars drive down Windsor Spring road near Cedar Village Mobile Home Park.

Carol Marsh holds a map of the Cedar Village Mobile Home Park as she draws how things might be affected by a proposed road-widening project.

Carol Marsh stands outside of Cedar Village Mobile Home Park for a portrait near Windsor Spring road, where a road-widening project has been proposed. Marsh is the owner of the mobile home park.

A proposal to add concrete medians on Windsor Spring Road has the owners of two mobile home parks concerned about traffic safety.

When the thoroughfare is widened from two to four lanes, the addition of a concrete median will block vehicles entering and exiting the parks, Carol and Loren Marsh said. The design forces people leaving the park to make a right-hand turn onto the northbound lane and then a U-turn at a break in the median to travel south.

“They’re not going to improve the flow of traffic,” said Loren Marsh. “It’s an impediment that’s not going to help.”

Construction to widen Windsor Spring Road from Tobacco Road to Georgia Highway 88 is expected to begin in 2014. An 8-foot-wide, multi-use trail will be added on both sides.

The Marshes, the owners of the parks since 1981, missed public meetings on the road project when they were out of town. Like other residents and business owners in the area, the Marshes have long wanted the road widened to relieve traffic congestion. But a center turn lane, similar to those on Tobacco Road and Washington Road, is a safer alternative to concrete medians, the couple said.

The Georgia Department of Transportation said a raised concrete median is planned because of high traffic volume.

More than 33,000 cars travel along Windsor Spring between Tobacco and Willis Foreman roads every day. That number is expected to climb to about 50,000 in the next two decades.

The mobile home parks have a combined 200 residential spaces, the Marshes said. The road is already congested because of nearby schools and Diamond Lakes Regional Park, and more commercial development is expected, Loren Marsh said.

Concrete medians will slow down response times for emergency vehicles and cause more motorists to make detours through neighborhoods, they said.